At the end of August 2023, in the two glorious weeks before summer officially ends and everyone girds themselves for a bustling fall, I had the incredibly good fortune to be a visiting curator at Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine. Occupying a writer’s hut on the campus, my goal was to leave with a chunk of my next book written—which just so happens to be on craft schools, so it was a perfect situation…
…Early in the session, the generous teacher in the fiber studio, University of Colorado at Boulder professor Steven Frost, and their incredible teaching assistant, Dr. S. Wu, set up a community loom. Chiming the gong in the dining hall one day early in our stay, they offered an open invitation to those gathered: Come add a few lines to the loom, no expertise necessary.